Coming Back
by GaleSynch
Summary: Centuries after their quest has ended, Thalia Grace stands, and looks back, wondering when the people she's lost will be coming back. Perlia.


**Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. One of the lines is from TOA's Ion, I don't own it.**

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**Coming Back**

_A Perlia Oneshot_

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If the mortal raises his head to look, he'll see a girl with blue eyes so vivid they bring electricity to shame and hair as black as coal framing the pale and picturesque face and he'll think that the girl his age looks so very pretty, so very familiar (_Thalia, where have I heard that name before?_) and perhaps he would want to talk to her.

Thalia Grace looks fifteen, but she's actually reaching her six hundredth birthday. She's cold and beautiful and confident, a true leader like her father is and she's got every trait he has, the good and the bad. But very, very few would notice it: the loneliness in the set of her mouth, the curtain that shrouds her eyes and makes them dimmer.

And every day, every year, every century, the crown that used to think as a blessing and responsibility and payback weighs heavier and heavier.

Sometimes, Thalia wonders if it's because Artemis is trying to train her or something.

She first realizes how heavy it is when Hermes shows up and hands her an invitation letter; even to this day, so many centuries later, she can still remember the golden print of the cursive words that says_ Marriage of Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase_ and she can remember the feeling in her chest when she reads and rereads the invitation again.

She remembers the twist in her chest, as if someone has stick a finger in and has started prodding her chest; it's uncomfortable and it makes it hard for her to breathe.

She traces the name of the groom and says, "I'll go," but some part of her doesn't want to go.

She brushes it off, thinking that she's being weird and paranoid that perhaps too many demigods will attract monsters.

She doesn't know why she traces his name once, twice and a third time before keeping the invitation.

(_It's still there, in her silver knapsack, along with the picture taken after the Second Giant War_)

**:: :: ::**

A son of Poseidon.

It has been years since the daughter of Zeus has set her eyes on one. Thalia thinks that this boy looks so very much like a young and noble hero from six hundred years ago; they have the same deep green eyes, same dark hair and tan skin even though this young, budding hero has a cheeky grin.

"How old are you?" he asks boldly, seemingly unafraid of her Huntress status and her narrowed eyes.

"Why?"

"You look old." The seven-year-old son of Poseidon shrieks hysterically when he sees her raise her fist threateningly. "NO! Don't misunderstand! That's not what I meant!"

"What're you talking about then?" she grunts.

"I mean that you just... you just look so tired."

(_It doesn't matter really, she's used to it and she doesn't need anyone to shoulder her burden, she's used to doing things alone and her way_)

**:: :: ::**

Thalia doesn't know how many years passed before she starts to forget them. Their faces, their quirks, their personalities, everything about them starts to slip away from her like sands from her hands, like water from her palms. With every tick of the clock, (_drip_) something about her precious friends slips away and dissolves in the wind.

The people around her (_those children_) whisper about the hero Jackson, the beautiful heroine Chase, the traitor turned hero Castellan. They speak of their last names and great deeds.

When she first hears them, it's the first time Thalia realizes that everyone she knows is gone.

That she's the only one who knows how wide their lips can stretch in a smile, how they brush their fingers through their hair when the wind whips them into their eyes, how his grin can make everything seem so mild and dull in comparison, the husk of his voice right after the Second Giant War when she'd rushed over to assist him in battle and how he says _Thalia, gods I've missed you_ and Thalia'd say Kelphead, as if that one word can convey her honest feelings.

They don't seem to recall, in their myths and fabled tales, that there is a girl, a daughter of Zeus who became a Huntress and regrets it.

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Thalia thinks it's weird but she's Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, so it's normal of her to wake up some few hundred years after Percy's death and thinks, _I wish I hadn't joined the Huntress of Artemis, I wish that-_

(In one of her demigod dreams that are considerably mild and less bloodthirsty than centuries ago, there's a boy with black hair and electric blue eyes, with flecks of green in his eyes; a girl with flowing black hair, green eyes and electricity surrounding her irises)

_-that the dream had been real._

On Thalia's 615th birthday, she wakes up from the same dream and suddenly remembers that the dream of those blue-eyed and green-eyed children is familiar and have been flitting in and out of life since she's a child.

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("Hey, are you okay?"

Sea-green eyes peer into hers with worry that's not supposed to be there because they're strangers and yet, at the same time, they weren't. She's been his inspiration and he's been in her dreams.

"Who... are you?"

"I'm Percy Jackson. Who're _you_?"

"Thalia," she says, unable to remove her eyes from his; she feels like she's drowning in them. "Daughter of Zeus.")

_She opens her eyes, silent and stares at the silver of her tent. She wishes it were green, preferably, the shade of the sea. After so many years, she thinks that she has had enough of silver to last a lifetime without them._

(In all the confusion, all the shouts of disbelief and tears and reunion with old friends and news of new enemies, Thalia dimly remembers a warm hand in hers, squeezing in reassurance when her knees buckle and her body swoons because walking is something she's not used to back then.

"It must be hard," he comments as she staggers but slaps his helping hand away when he reaches out.

"You don't know anything," she says bitterly.

He smiles faintly. "I guess not. But—"

"Just shut up already," she cuts in. "I need to concentrate."

"—I'll always be there to help you."

She remembers that night by the beach where she's stumbling and trying to regain the feel of walking with her legs and tries to ignore the sensation of them being roots before, she can no longer recall the jelly-feeling of her legs; but she can details how bright and sincere his green eyes were back then.)

_She trips, stumbles and falls; she bites back the cry of pain as the hellhound lunges and bites her booted leg, she retaliates viciously and thrusts her spear; she watches with a scowl as it dissolves into yellow dust. _

_As she staggers to her feet and tries to walk and ignore the pain, she says, out loud, "Liar."_

("So, Calypso will always be your biggest regret?" Thalia doesn't give him a chance to say anything before she punches his shoulder, not lightly because she's never been gentle—she's the human embodiment of the turbulent storms her father likes to create. "You're a terrible husband. You've married Annabeth, you better _not_ regret it or make her cry because I'll end you. You better to tell me you married her because you accidentally knocked her up."

"Hard to take a fifteen-year-old kid seriously, Pinecone Face."

She slugs him again and he winces. But she knows he's right. In their appearance, there's a ten year gap. He, twenty-five, ancient in demigod years, but she's fifteen and years after his body decays in the earth, she will still look like that.

"What about you?"

"Hm?"

"What's your biggest regret?"

Thalia blinks at the question, stumped for a moment; unconsciously, she raises her eyes to his face and they stare at one another for a long, long time.

Then the cry of Percy's seventh-month old baby pierces through the tension between the children of the Big Three.

Thalia's head whips away as Percy rushes to tend to his son's needs because Annabeth is out shopping; she places a hand to her chest and tells it to calm down.

"Hey, Thalia!"

"What?"

"Do you want to hold Iapetus?"

Thalia's heart melts like butter when the baby's blue eyes swivels to her and she accepts the bundle of joy and energy. "I still can't believe you named the baby after the Titan. I'm feel sorry for you, Ian."

Percy makes a face but when he speaks, it's not a complain, instead, he says, "He has blue eyes, like you."

"...It'll probably be green."

Thalia adjusts the baby and in doing so, the blanket wrapped around him slips slightly off his head. Thalia sees Annabeth's blonde hair.

"Sorry," she says abruptly, shoving the baby back to Percy. "I've got to go, Artemis' calling.")

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"Thank you... for everything... my most... cherished."

Thalia remembers Percy's last words at his deathbed like it's just been spoken an hour ago. She wishes she has a way to communicate with the dead (but there hasn't been a child of Hades in decades and the Pluto's children rarely have the ability to do so and she suddenly finds herself missing Bianca's little brother) because there's something she wants to know.

"Percy," she says to thin air, wondering if the dead can hear the living on the anniversary of their deaths. "Why did your eyes flicker to me when you said your last? What were you trying to say?"

(Hope is the incurable disease, it is also the most painful.)

Bitterly, she wishes he had spoken those words on a December 15th six hundred years ago.

**:: :: ::**

This is Thalia's greatest strength, if you ask her she'll answer that this it: that she can walk on despite everything, despite the pain, the losses, the deaths and the grief because she's always been tough.

She's Thalia Grace, she's strong and she's nearly indestructible.

She just wishes the whispers of a long dead man—no, a boy named Percy—will stop affecting her that way.

The way his voice can morph into phantom daggers to stab her heart.

But there's nothing they can do anymore, at this stage, other than to let go._ Until the world will allow our love then we'll say goodbye. _

It's okay, Thalia thinks, they can never get rid of one another back then, and even when they're miles apart, one will always find a way to haunt the other, to slip into the other's thoughts and dreams.

She's sure six hundred years won't be able to change that fact.

They'll meet again down the line they call life.

_After all—_

("Ha!" Thalia laughs, triumphant as she snags the flag from where it's hidden; she dashes past the trees in Camp Half-Blood, centuries of playing this game and running through the same field has taught her many things, she can navigate her way with her eyes closed. And to think, once upon a time, she's lost so badly.

Now, all she has to do is cross the creek.

There's only one boy who stands guard by the creek; he smirks at her, green eyes glinting and windswept black hair lifts slightly in the night breeze.

Her heart starts tap-dancing in the confines of her skin and bones [_she's missed that face, that trademark sarcastic smile_] but she doesn't falter.

She'll win, even if her opponent is him.

And, laughing with joy, she tumbles into him, his arms, inhales his scent that makes her think that she's at the beach and for the first time in forever, she feels young again)

_—the people we love have a way of coming back to us._

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_Not as much romance as I would've liked but I'm trying to fit this into canon.** Review and tell me what you think. :P**_


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